Punch (63.1872)

Decbmbeb 21, 1872.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

253

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the franchise, he used a jolly sort of illustration. He
said that " it was idle to degrade the vote. Any Work-
ing Man could have one for the price of one hundred
and twenty pots of beer." If the beer were good, I
wouldn't lose one pot for a vote, leastways in a metro-
politan borough.

Nobody honours our clergy more than I do, but some
of them puzzle me considerably. Last week the Ritualists
and the Calvinists took sweet counsel together as they
went up to the voting place together to cause the Dean
or Westminster's exclusion from the Oxford pulpit.
I am happy to say that they were soundly beaten. Then
a very worthy clergyman, the Dean of Norwich, who was
also appointed to preach, writes a long letter refusing
to do so. Now, if he believed that the other Dean
would teach incorrect doctrine, why did not Dr. Goel-
buen preach sermons administering the antidote ? Evasit.
As a third Dean wrote, or thereabouts, touching a fourth;

" And 0 how the graduates giggle and gape—

For the good ^Norwich Dean tucks his gown for escape ! "

" Why do you call the man See Roger Tichborne ?"
sternly demanded Vice-Chancellor Malins, from the
Bench. " He calls himself Sir Roger ! " I have never
called him a baronet, so my bead is safe; but is there
not some law making it high treason to confer a title
not proved to be derived from the Queen's Majesty ?
Gracious! suppose Mr. Whalley should have his head
cut off! As the Scotchwoman said, after somebody's
execution, " It might not be much of a head, but it was
ome, Sisters, now your Brothers are home from the public the only one he had, poor man !"'
schools, try those youths with a bit of dictation. This has
been sent me by a young lady of Connecticut, who says that
a prize was offered at the Teachers' Institute there to any one who could spell
the whole correctly. "It is an agreeable sight to witness the unparalleled
embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of a peeled jjotatoe,
which a sibyl has stabbed with a poniard regardless of the innuendos of the
lilies of Carnelian hue."

The good Loed Romixly resigns the Rolls. Instantly favour me with two
quotations in which his name occurs. Well ? One is in Wordsworth's poem,
What is good for a bootless bene ? And the other ? Byron's —

" I'd preach on that till Wilberforce and Romilly
Should quote in their next speeches from my homily.'

Good, Tobias. And whence comes the name? Perhaps from Romilly, in ^ Correspondent wrote to me, the other day, to ask
Savoy. Good agam-catch that merrythought. whether, if the lady you take down to dinner proves

sulky or stupid, it is a breach of etiquette to drop her
In Dryden's very wickedest comedy occurs this :—"You may call him a j altogether, and talk to the one on the other side of you.
fool, Gentlemen, but it is well known he is a Critick." John could plant a hit. I fear that my answer was a little Jesuitical. I wrote

that no Lady, with a large L, was ever sulky or stupid,
Melancholy of the Minor key. " I deny your minor," as Falstaff might have and that no particular ceremony was usual with a Person
said, had Shakspeare pleased. My Major key is that wherewith I open my who is not a lady,
cellar-door. My Minor key is that I use when compelled to take out my

cheque-book. Now, which suggests melancholy ? But, to speak seriatim (as a Vestryman would say),

- j you have no right to assume that because a Lady does not

From whom does Montaigne quote Jactantius mcerent quae minus dolent? talk to you she is either stupid or sulky. The chances
Needless, now that every lady knows Latin, to say that it means— are that you open with effete nonsense, and she takes

They blub the most who're wopped the least." measure. You should begin with something

pleasantly startling. It she is single, ask her why she
isn't married ; and if she is, ask her whom she means to
marry when her present husband dies. Be original.

What a tremendous crowd came to see the fat cattle
this year! I doubt whether half the people saw any
four-legsed beast. 1 did not go, being in mourning for
the late Queen Anne, and not caring

To bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances and the Cattle-Show,

as dear Thomas Hood put it. But I would have gone if
the spectacle had terminated with the solemn flogging
of six fat footmen who had refused to eat Australian
meat. [He did go. Vide picture, later. Z1.]

Another row, I see, brought about by dogs. But in the old days, when two
dogs quarrelled and fought, their masters did the first on the spot, and the
second next morning. In this late case, only one of the parties produced a
pistol, and he had to go home for it. The Magistrates disapproved of this one-
sided duel. But the juvenes qui gaudent canibus are always in trouble, Toby.
Don't sulk. Am I ajuvenisf

Dr. Cbmming prophesied that 1860 "would be the beginning of scenes that
to Christian people would be most pleasant." It was not a very good shot. In
London we had the riots in the Church of St. George's-in-the-East; in the
country there was the great fight between Tom Sayers and Heenan ; France
stole Savoy and Nice ; the Maronite Christians were horribly massacred by the
Druses; and South Carolina seceded,—thus "beginning" "the greatest civil
war ever known."

When it was proposed to refuse to the Bishop oe Natal the courtesies
of the Atheneeum Club, the late Sir John Bowring was very indignant. He
asked one of the orthodox Bishops, who urged the exclusion of Dr. Colenso,
" what he meant by bringing his theological prejudices into a society of
gentlemen ? "

Middlemarch is the event of the year, there can be no two words about that.

When my friend, Bob Lowe, in that famous speech, opposed the lowering of

I declare that I always learn something from conversa-
tion with any woman. But then I am so umble :

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much.
"Wisdom is umble that he knows no more."

Now, most Men are stupid. They know their trades,
more or less. But for anything else where would they be
but for the leading articles ?

If Ladies read those articles, and could hear their Lords
reproduce them, much injured and blundered, in the
talk after dinner, the former would have a greater con-
tempt for our intellects than now. Which thing is
needless.__

In the Church of St. Andrew, Holborn, is a monu-
ment, dated 1603, with an inscription beginning—
" My Turtle gone, all joy is gone from me."

T showed this to an Alderman one dayr, and he said
that pome of our ancestors had very proper feelings,